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Our research has made an outstanding contribution to the ability of police forces to apprehend criminal suspects, particularly in cases of serious violent crime. EvoFIT is a facial composite system (software and procedures), designed to help victims and witnesses of crime to create a likeness of the perpetrator's face. It was conceived by Professor Peter Hancock in the mid-1990s and has been developed into an effective system that is in use by police forces across the UK and abroad. Forces using EvoFIT have actively collaborated with assessment of the system, and evidence from field trials clearly demonstrates the impact: a world-leading 25-60% of composites made with EvoFIT directly lead to an arrest, four times better than the best previous system used by police forces. Our novel methods for interviewing witnesses and for presentation of composites have enhanced the success of EvoFIT, and are now incorporated in competitor composite systems used by other police forces.
Frowd's research aims to understand the extent to which witnesses and victims of crime construct accurate facial composites (pictures of criminal's faces), and to develop techniques which maximize the effectiveness of composites, thus allowing the police to identify as many offenders as possible using this type of forensic evidence. The principal impact involves a software system (EvoFIT), a new interview (Holistic-Cognitive Interview, H-CI) and two formats (animated caricature and stretched composite) for the police to publish composites in the media. In the audit period, these advancements have been used by police forces in the UK, US, Romania and Israel.
Our impact on the theory and practice of biometrics (identification of individuals through measurement/analysis of their physiological/behavioural characteristics) embraces contributions to technological development, to general systems-level principles and to public policy and professionalisation issues. Our research and consequent engagement across the stakeholder community has impacted on the technological development of practical biometrics through take-up by industry (e.g. InMezzo, one of the UK's leading secure information specialists, has enhanced identity authentication procedures), company spinout (the EFIT-V facial recognition suite from VisionMetric Ltd fundamentally changed the means by which facial composites are created and is now used by more than 85% of Britain's Police Forces), leadership of the development of standards for the expanding commercial marketplace (e.g. establishment of standards for image acquisition for e-passports and other access control applications) and policy-level input to Government and International Professional Bodies, providing long-term support for practical deployment and end- user engagement (the Biometrics Assurance Group with Fairhurst as an independent member reported the security risk and problems identifying fingerprints within the UK government's £5.6bn ID card scheme proposal).
Prosopagnosia, or the inability to recognise faces, affects one person in 50, but public and professional awareness of the condition is low. Bournemouth University (BU) established The Centre for Face Processing Disorders (CFPD) to provide cognitive screening and training programmes to improve recognition skills for affected adults and children. The centre has grown significantly and, having tested over 100 people for prosopagnosia, now treats 30 adults and 10 children through cognitive training and clinical treatment. While patient numbers are moderate to date, the service is unique in the UK and has provided proof of concept for a scalable prosopagnosia diagnosis and a treatment approach. This includes protocols for different conditions including Autism and Moebius syndrome. In addition, the CFPD has orchestrated policy changes within significant health organisations and charities.
The Geometric Modelling and Pattern Recognition (GMPR) Group at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) has developed and patented internationally-known line projection technologies for fast 3D scan, reconstruction and recognition. Three types of impact can be identified: (i) through our patents, we have licensed to companies in Europe and the USA; (ii) these technologies are being transferred to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) across Europe, through the European funded MARWIN and ADMOS projects; and (iii) social and cultural impacts are evidenced by the 3D scanning of representative items from the Museums Sheffield Metalwork Collection which have been made publicly available on the web, and through the `Man of Steel' community project where a landmark sculpture will form a gateway to South Yorkshire and the Sheffield City Region.
This research, which examines police investigatory methods to identify police suspects has directly increased suspect identification rates by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). It led to the MPS establishing a register of `super-recognisers' - officers particularly skilled at identifying faces from CCTV footage - and changed practices. Dissemination of the research, also well-publicised in the media, has influenced national policy makers. There is worldwide interest and secured European funding for a test to identify super-recognisers amongst police cohorts. The research is also improving recognition of EFIT-V images, the facial composite system used by most UK police forces. Dr Davis is disseminating his findings through the training course that operators have to complete to be certified to produce composites in real police investigations. He is also contributing to economic impact by enhancing the EFIT-V product.
Wilkinson has developed, evaluated and applied techniques, standards and datasets for facial depiction and identification of the dead. The impacts include:
Research conducted within the School of Physical Sciences (SPS) at the University of Kent has led to the development and successful commercialisation of facial identification software named EFIT-V. First sold in 2007, this software is now used by more than 70 police forces internationally and has revolutionized the way eyewitnesses and victims of crime create computerised facial likenesses of offenders. These images are circulated to police intelligence units, and the general public, leading to the identification and arrests of offenders. Police Identification rates have jumped from 5% to 55% as a result of this software. With a current annual turnover exceeding £250K, which is projected to reach £600K by 2015, Kent spinout company Visionmetric has made significant impact with EFIT-V, and achieved a position of commercial dominance in the UK, and around the world.
A unique aspect of the signal and image processing research at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) lies in exploitation of the synergies between non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of aerostructures in the aerospace manufacturing sector and non-invasive diagnosis (NID) of patients in the medical sector. For the former, through collaborative research with world leading aerospace companies, data processing technologies used in medical NID have been exploited to ensure structural safety of aircraft at reduced time and cost. For the latter, through collaborative research with the UCLan led Europe-wide network which includes top medical research centres and hospitals, sensing technologies used in aerospace NDE have been exploited to create new measurement modalities for quantitative medical diagnosis of major diseases. Furthermore, arising out the cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary research the Tele-immersive Digital Manufacturing facility (TiM) emerges as our vision for the factory of the future which has attracted investments from the world leading digital technology providers and made impacts on one of the most important manufacturing regions in the world.